Interview with Bill Morrison on Incident

In 2018 in Chicago, tensions are high between Chicago Police and the black community. Both groups are anticipating the murder trial of Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke who shot and killed Laquan McDonald four years earlier. Van Dyke said that he “acted in self-defence” in killing him. Through efforts of investigative journalists, dashboard camera recordings were released 13 months later, which shows that Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times, nine of which were in the back, and led to Van Dyke being indicted on six counts first degree murder. In the days leading up to Van Dyke’s trial, police presence on the streets of Chicago was increased exponentially.
Bill Morrison’s incendiary documentary short film Incident documents in exacting detail the July 2018 shooting of another black men, Harith “Snoop” Augustus by Chicago Police officer Dillan Halley. Halley shot Augustus five times in what he also said was “in self-defence,” when he claimed that Augustus pointed his gun at a group of five officers on foot. Morrison uses the officer’s body cam footage as well as dashcam and CCTV surveillance video to create a minute-by-minute timeline of that afternoon’s events, and shows that after he was shot, another officer removed Augustus’ gun from its holster, where it had been the whole time.

Morrison, working with the groups Chicago Civilian Office of Police Accountability, Forensic Architecture, and Invisible Institute, uses ever-changing configurations of split-screens to keep track and give precise details of each player in the unfolding chaos. Halley and his partner leave the scene and their conversations carry on with them on their body cams, while dashcams of other officers show the increasingly tense crime scene, and the surveillance camera video stays focused on Augustus’ body.
In Incident, Morrison takes a sharp turn from the style of his previous works, which often present scenes from silent movie era films on nitrate film that has begun the process of decaying (including his 2002 masterpiece Decasia). Morrison continues the use of found footage but in Incident makes use of open-source digital video rather than analog film. The decay that has been an obsession of Morrison’s is also relevant as the images degrade into pixels through long zooms. Morrison has shifted his focus from the decay of nitrate filmstrips to the decay of society, and where Decasia’s use of century old films showed a lost past, Incident’s heartbreaking images of police violence show Augustus’ lost future.
Watch Incident here: https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/incident
Review by: Joshua Hunt
Interview by: Pedro Lima
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